Weizenbaum 

Edit 0 4 …
Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation (1976)- Weizenbaum




SUMMARY/COMMENTARY

Introduction

Discussion begins by identifying the satirical publication, The Onion, as a platform for negative criticism of computer technology
  • These “dire warnings” usually emanated from those who had little or no experience with computers
  • But, when Joseph Weizenbaum expressed similar concerns about computer technology, the whole of the technosphere paid rapt attention

Joseph Weizenbaum (1/8/23- 3/5/08)
  • a professor emeritus of computer science at MIT
  • in the early 1950s, he worked on analog computers; later, helped design and build a digital computer at Wayne University in Detroit.
  • Among his early technical contributions were the list processing system SLIP and the natural language understanding program ELIZA
  • ELIZA is an early natural language processing computer program created from 1964 to 1966 at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
  • ELIZA was an important development in AI which catapulted Weizenbaum to rock star status in the annals of computer science research
  • Later became critical of AI
  • displayed ambivalence toward computer technology and
  • warned of the danger (and immorality) of giving machines responsibility for making human choices.
  • "No other organism, and certainly no computer, can be made to confront genuine human problems in human terms," he wrote.
  • By the early 1980s, he was railing against the concept of computer illiteracy, as "mass hysteria" drummed up by industry to sell more product
  • Real focus should be on literacy in the general sense and not computer literacy


Some quotes from interview with New Age Jl (’85):


"The dependence on computers is merely the most recent -- and the most extreme-example of how man relies on technology in order to escape the burden of acting as an independent agent"

"It [dependence on the machine] helps him avoid the task of giving meaning to his life, of deciding and pursuing what is truly valuable."

  • Authored "Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation," (1976)


  • Begins by discussing the tension between philosophical positions represented by Russian theorist/philosoper Nicolai Bukharin and scientist Michael Polyani (Chair of Chem., ’35-Victoria Univ. Manchester, England
  • Bukharin concluded that in a socialist world science for science’s sake would dissolve into a mechanistic activity divorced from true intellectual curiosity and freedom of thought
  • Questions related to Bukharin’s position was so shocking to the scientist Polanyi that it dominated his philosophical life
  • W shares this history for two reasons: (1) because it underscores for him how what should be obvious (“That science is creative…that creation springs only from autonomous individuals…) can end up as the subject of protracted debate and (2) because he experienced a similar shock in his own experience



ELIZA, a brief description
  • Chose name because of Pygmalian allusion
  • Two-tiered construction: language analyzer, script
  • Scripts enabled ELIZA to play a specific conversational role
  • First experiment was as Rogerian therapist; reflecting patients statements back to him/her


ELIZA: Please tell me what’s been bothering you.
ME: Oh, hello, ELIZA. It’s been a long time.
ELIZA: Hi. What seems to be your problem ?
ME: Lately, I’ve been feeling a little depressed.
ELIZA: And how do you feel right now ?
ME: I feel sad, but relieved to be writing.
ELIZA: Of what does feeling sad remind you ?
ME: Well, I’m an alcoholic, and I’ve been sober for a long time, but I drank yesterday. And then I decided to stop drinking again. But still; that makes me feel sad.
ELIZA: Is it because you are an alcoholic that you came to me ?
ME: I suppose that that’s one of the reasons.
ELIZA: Can you elaborate on that ?
Weizenbaum’s Shock


  • ELIZA became known as “DOCTOR” because of this role as therapist
  • Became famous initially around MIT
  • User friendly
  • Replicated at other institutions
  • Became a national plaything

Shock1: Respected members of psychiatric community saw a future for the program as a completely automatic form of psychotherapy

Shock 2: The emotional interaction with and anthropomorphization of the program

Shock 3: Belief that program was a solution to the problem of computer comprehension of natural language

The remainder of Weizenbaum’s discussion centers around three areas of inquiry:

  1. “What is it about the computer that has brought the view of man as a machine to a new level of plausibility”?
  2. What are the “wider senses in which man has come to yield his own autonomy to a world viewed as machine”?
  3. The relationship between man’s paradoxical distrust of his own autonomy and increasing reliance on autonomous machines and a conception of the internal realities of the machine.

Weizenbaum’s conclusions might be encapsulated in the following significant quotes:


  • “my experience with Eliza was symptomatic of deeper problems”
  • “the introduction of computers into… society has …driven man to an …ever more mechanistic image of himself”
  • “the question is …whether or not human thought is entirely computable”
  • “I would argue that…there are some acts of thought that ought to be attempted only by humans.”
  • Of a scientific paradigm: “Not only has our unbounded feeding on science caused us to become dependent on it… science has gradually converted into a slow-acting poison.”
  • “Scientific statements can never be certain; they can be only more or less certain”
  • “the attribution of certainty to scientific knowledge by the common wisdom…has virtually delegitimized all other ways of thinking.”




Discussion questions:

  1. Given the many technological advancements in the nearly twenty years since Weizenbaum’s death, how might his position on the relationship between man and machine be adjusted?
  2. What is your understanding of the “rationality-logicality equation”? Why are the thought processes this concept suggests problematic?